Stuart McMillan
ALTIS CEO
Embrace the Suck
“Embrace the Suck” The first person I heard say this was David Goggins a few years back. Goggins’ slogan is rooted in the assertion that we are - generally - pretty soft. As soon as something becomes overly challenging, we stop - we find a way not to do it, or an easier way to do it. We impose limits...
Top-Down or Bottom-Up?
How can we employ a Performance Therapy Methodology (systems thinking) in a team sport environment? I have been thinking about this for a few years now and our team here at ALTIS recently sat down to discuss it at some length. While I think I’m pretty confident in how this could be done effectively, we first need to understand the...
Working from Home
We are certain that you - like all of us - are effected by the coronavirus. Many of you are now working from home, or worse - may have potentially been let go from your job. Indeed, our own staff are now working off-site, unless we are directly interacting with the athlete group. It is a challenging time for us all, and...
I’m an idiot
“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Francis Bacon I’ve got a confession to make. In my best of 2019 Book List, I included my good friend Dr. John Berardi’s book Change Maker. And I probably should not have. Here’s why. If you have read a few of my ‘best-of’...
Coach Stuart McMillan’s Best Books of 2019
I’m not a book critic, so I’m not going to give a critique, as I have occasionally done in the past. Rather, I will simply share a list of what were important books for me in 2019. Many of them have appeared on many other lists, and will no doubt be familiar to you. If this is the case - if many...
“Coach to the athlete’s solutions; not yours”
This is a saying that I probably repeat weekly in some way or another. It essentially means that each athlete has their own unique way of moving; that our jobs as performance professionals (in this case, coaches, therapists, and sport scientists) is to appreciate and understand athletes’ ‘movement signatures’, and train them in a way that best aligns to this....
Efficient – Correct – Optimal …. who really cares?
Do you think that you can tell how efficient an athlete is by watching them perform? If you ask most people, Paula Radcliffe had a pretty inefficient running style. Yet she has ran the fastest time of any female in history, in one of the most competitive events - the marathon. In each of her 20,000 plus steps, Radcliffe nodded...
Cynefin, Klay and KD
Over the last few weeks, through my weekly emails to the ALTIS Community, I have been writing about implementing a Performance Therapy methodology into an environment not currently operating in such a way. I spent a few weeks discussing the bigger problem of how to impart greater cultural change, and this week began to narrow into the details somewhat. ...
Coach Stuart McMillan’s Best Books of 2016
We are happy to present the fourth installment of ALTIS Performance Director and Sprint Coach Stuart McMillan's 'Best of' Books. “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” - Francis Bacon Following along with Sir Bacon’s quote above, and using Mortimer Adler’s guidelines on ‘how to read a book’ as a starting point,...
Stuart McMillan – The Olympic Games experience
ALTIS Performance Director, Stuart McMillan takes centre stage in the fourth of our post-Rio interviews. In this Q&A, Stu shares unique experiences gained through coaching over 70 athletes to 9 Olympic Games - both summer and winter. Which Olympic Games have you coached at? I've coached actively at: Salt Lake City 2002, Torino 2006, Vancouver-Whistler 2010, London 2012, Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016. I also coached athletes...